Inspired Strategies for your Creative Calling

All at once, bit by bit

I’m probably the worst person to write on focus, or so I think. So many things on the go, pulled in so many directions.

But then I realized that actually I can focus very well in small chunks.

Case in point: today, I am uploading still image videos to YouTube in case anyone should want to listen to The Zamo the Destroyer Show there. I had had some up before, then thought I’d pull them down and just have videos where you actually see me on my own YouTube, so half the work of making the videos was done, but I still had to (re-)upload them all.

And for whatever reason I have no trouble singlemindedly knocking them out – one window open to a long line of YouTube uploads to monitor, another open to iMovie as I make new ones (9 down, 10 to go). I’m working factory style: as soon as a video finishes exporting from iMovie I add it to the upload queue, and so far this afternoon I’ve got 18 uploaded, 6 more currently waiting in line, one being exported, and 3 other later ones waiting their turn.

So why is it easy to focus on this today when I swear I can’t focus?

Well, it’s a singular task (make and upload all 39 episodes of one of my podcasts), done in a streamlined fashion by means of breaking things down into small repeatable steps, and a bunch of the same sort of thing is being done at once, making it easy to copy and paste and repeat actions without having to think about what comes next.

Similarly, yesterday afternoon I shot 3 episodes of my Sit Down Monologue videos back to back, and that also benefitted from a similar sort of “all at once, bit by bit” workflow. That’s also how I do my Monday Music Nonsense videos, up to 16 episodes at a time.

So, if you’re having focus issues, maybe see what aspects of your work can be bundled together like this, it just might help.